[center][h1][color=darkgoldenrod]Khthon[/color][/h1][/center]

Khthon stood looking at the shattered crystal veins and felt... grief. Yes, grief for the lost beauty he had never gotten to know. Grief for their unforeseen, yet necessary sacrifice. A tragic side-effect to the awakening of the Earth.

He knew his acts had plunged the surface into chaos, the destruction up there much more intense than within his realm. It hadn't been his goal, per say, but he had known such things would happen. Perhaps his indifference, or rather, lack of understanding, towards life made him more callous than he should, but it was an unfortunate truth that the surface had grown before the depths had been finished, and that rectifying this error would damage his God-Siblings' work. Yet, the Earth could not remain inert, it needed movement, energy, and power. It needed the capacity to change. A dead Earth would lead to a dead world, at least in Khthon's eyes.

The initial chaos would eventually subside, and do so even sooner with Khthon's help. He spread his awareness through the Earth, feeling the bubbling and the raging of liquid stone. His will ascertained itself, and the raging... calmed. It was not gone, for such activity was necessary for the new resource to find its natural place, but it was lessened, less violent, and the surface should tremble less. In time, magma would integrate itself into the cycles of the Earth, and become a transformative force, sometimes constructive, sometimes destructive, just like the winds or the rains.

But oh, the crystals, their loss stung [i]differently[/i].

The God sent one last forlorn glance to the shattered arrays, now forever dimmed. Never again would they shine, and though they were still beautiful in death, theirs was a tragic beauty, a remainder of what he had lost.

But one could not remain still and grieving when so much remained to be done. These crystals may be dead, yes, but many still remained, more or less intact. He could save them, redirect them, help them adapt. They, too, were of the Earth, and the Earth persisted through all. Khthon would make sure of it.

The God began moving from root to root, trying his best to help them acclimate to the new heat. He would murmur soft reassurances and apologies to the most panicked of crystals, as if reconciling with a jilted lover, trying to soothe their glow. He would redirect the most fragile of roots away from the harsher depths, towards the cooler, calmer caverns. He would cool the superheated ones, the ones on the brink of shattering from the excess heat, cycling the surrounding stones with cooler ones to have them reach a certain equilibrium. He would encourage the few roots actively reaching towards magma, sending them with a caress what little energy he could spare to strengthen them and help them survive the heat.

They would adapt, they would survive, and they would come to understand how harness the heat. The Earth would not die yet; it had just started living.

[hider=Summary]
Khthon mourns the death of some of the crystal veins. To him, their loss is more tragic than the loss of life on the surface, which he had expected from his little stunt. He still sees it as a necessary sacrifice for the animating of the Earth, and understand that while the creation of new cycles is turbulent, they will eventually stabilize. He first calms the raging magma, settling it in a calmer, but still very active state. He then begins moving around and visiting each surviving crystal root, trying his best to help them adapt and survive the new changes, by calming and protecting the more fragile ones, and encouraging the stronger, more inquisitive ones to assimilate magma in their way of living.

[u]Conviction spending[/u]
- Calming a natural disaster - Khthon calms a lot, but does not entirely stop, the earthquakes and eruptions on the surface. For reference, let's say it goes from "the world is actively ending" to "a bad but not catastrophic year in a volcanic belt". (In-domain, lucid, 0 conviction)
- Attempting to calm, protect, strengthen, and just generally help the crystal veins as they adapt to the new Earth. (In-domain? Unsure if Lucid or Hazy, 0-1 cost.)
[/hider]